Saturday, 20 October 2012

ePorfolios Blogs and Audience Response Systems at Back to School Night

I must say that many back-to-school nights are a bit painful. For
those of you who are not familiar with this, it's an evening where you
go to the school (without your children) and the teachers tell you a
little bit about how they will approach the year. This year, I attended
three different back-to-school nights for my three children
(elementary, middle school and high school).

Most
teachers hand a sheet with all the information they plan to present
(which is good because there are often lots of links and other helpful
information). And then they proceed to walk through it. I'm sure most
of you can relate. You are sitting there while the teacher reads what's
on the sheet to you. You could have got the sheet delivered to you and
then just visit the teacher another time. Of course, I'm not exactly
the best audience and there's no Session Hopping available at
back-to-school.

I believe that many teachers will tell
you that it's equally painful going through from their side. My wife
used to dread both back to school and open house nights. Not sure how
my mother felt (a school teacher for 35 years). I should really have
asked her before I posted this. But my guess is that she didn't really
like it that much either. The nice thing about being a professor is
that you never saw parents except on rare visits (shake their hand,
exchange pleasantries) and at graduation. You never had to do a
presentation to them.

So while I was really dreading
having to do three different back-to-school nights, I must say there
were two very pleasant surprises. And, just in case any of the other
teachers who have my children in their class this year read this, I must
say this whole year was an exceptionally good back to school night.
Still there were two standouts.
ePortfolios and Blogs

My
oldest daughter, a freshman in high school, has a fantastic teacher,
Ms. Gerber, for Honors English. Ms. Gerber has the class creating
ePorfolios and Blogging as teaching tools! I honestly almost fell out
of my chair when she casually mentioned this. And I was struck by the
stares of the other parents who clearly had no idea what she was saying.

Now
I know that many of my fellow bloggers who come from education will be
saying "no duh, Tony" this is happening all over the place. But it's a
bit different when you see it really being applied.

image

As
an example, the students watched the courtroom drama 12 Angry Men. Ms.
Gerber asked the students to post comments in the class blog:
Assignment Two. Certainly, seeing what the other students said in their
responses is a great thing. There wasn't much interaction among the
students as in Assignment One. But it was still good to see answers.
And it was funny to see my daughter say:

I used to
have a feeling I would be a good lawyer, because I have a lot of
arguments with my dad, but now I'm not so sure. If that's what it's like
in a courtroom, I wouldn't last very long!

Ms. Gerber
also has started the students on a journey of creating an ePorfolio
using Google Sites. They aren't much to look at yet, but having
recently run across a few examples of ePortfolios that students have
pulled together across several years – I'm sure that it's a great idea
to have them starting on one now.

image

I'm
quite curious what recommendations people have around how to
effectively create an ePortfolio that will help you get into college.
Currently, my daughter's portfolio is oriented around Years and
Subjects. That doesn't seem right to me, but maybe it doesn't matter at
this point. Any pointers?
Audience Response System

The
other pleasant surprise was Mr. Luke Olesiuk, at the middle school. He
teaches math and went through all of the normal stuff that all the
teachers do. However, he made it quite enjoyable because he used an
audience response system in the classroom and presented most everything
that way. As we walked in, he provided each parent a clicker. It's
from TurningPoint Systems – see it below:

image

Then
he spent what I have to believe was a fair bit of time designing his
presentation. Instead of saying, my goals for the year are X, Y, and
Z. He would put a question on the projector that said - "My goals for
the year are all of the following except one of these …" and he would
list X, Y and Z and at least one funny response. I was surprised how
effectively it kept everyone engaged. Most parent intentionally would
get wrong answers (at least I hope), but it gave him opportunity to talk
through why those were the goals or whatever.

Truly he
turned something mundane into something fun. And he ended exactly on
time (used a timer in his hand to track). Clearly he spent time
designing this out, but the result was great. It made me think that
with the advent of audience response via web solutions, this is going to
make in-person presentations a lot more interesting in the future.
Quite topical given: Narrowing Gap between Face-to-Face and Online
Presentations and New Presenter and Learner Skills and Methods.

The only drag was the following note that we received:

Parents - I'm still missing Clicker # C14 from Back-To-School night
last night...if you accidentally borrowed it after the presentation
yesterday, please send it back with your student on Monday. Thank you!

Amazing that he doesn't lose them with kids, but does with parents.

Maybe if Turning Point Systems sees this post they can send him a new one. :)